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KentuckyFC writes "In a truly frightening study, physicists at the University of Oxford have identified a massive miscalculation that makes the LHC safety assurances more or less invalid (abstract). The focus of their work is not the safety of particle accelerators per se but the chances of any particular scientific argument being wrong. 'If the probability estimate given by an argument is dwarfed by the chance that the argument itself is flawed, then the estimate is suspect,' say the team. That has serious implications for the LHC, which some people worry could generate black holes that will swallow the planet. Nobody at CERN has put a figure on the chances of the LHC destroying the planet. One study simply said: 'there is no risk of any significance whatsoever from such black holes.' The danger is that this thinking could be entirely flawed, but what are the chances of this? The Oxford team say that roughly one in a thousand scientific papers have to be withdrawn because of errors but generously suppose that in particle physics, the rate is one in 10,000."

Great. Now in a matter of years we'll have hippies protesting abuse of Nature's Own Black Holes for generating power. It's not really sustainable energy if all the mass you add to the hole extends its event horizon. (Does it?)

'If the probability estimate given by an argument is dwarfed by the chance that the argument itself is flawed, then the estimate is suspect,'

But if the improbability is large enough, and you hook it up to a nice, hot cup of tea; then we'll travel instantaneously through every point of the Universe, and possibly create a worried-looking whale and a bowl of petunias.

Hell, it's technically "possible" (in the sense that anything is possible) that me getting out of bed in the morning will destroy the earth. It doesn't seem likely, though, and no one has successfully convinced me that I'm dangerous, so I'm going to get out of bed in the morning.

You almost had a good excuse for staying in bed there. "Sorry Boss. I can't come to work today because if I get out of bed I might destroy the planet."

But what if we don't die? What if we discover that we've been living in a black hole this whole time and the current universe's edges are simply the expanding event horizon? Living in a black hole within a black hole would be neat! I wanna press the red button:(

> You don't say, "Oh well, we don't know for sure that anything bad will happen, so we'll just assume that it won't." That is voodoo science.

I say that to myself every time I put on my coat. I know I am lying to myself - with our limited understanding of the universe putting on clothes may very well trigger an unforseen event that destroys the solar system - but the snow outside has convinced me to sacrifice a little intellectual integrity in exchange for being able to wear my coat. Don't worry, I'm not taking too many risks: I'm not wearing anything underneath.

Essentially their argument boils down to because people make mistakes and we can calculate the odds of them making a mistake, if they calculate the odds of something and it's greater than the odds of them having made a mistake then you have to use the odds of them making a mistake as the probability of the event happening.

Nuh-uh, that argument is solid and well formed.

Hey, I have another "scientific" theory, 1 out of every 460 scientific papers are about artificial intelligence, That means the LHC is alive and we don't even know it yet.!

Yeah it is voodoo. If I calculate that there is a 1:10^20 chance an asteroid will destroy the earth this month, and someone else figures there is a 1:50 chance I am wrong, that does not make the odds of an asteroid destroying the earth 1:50. As wrong as the person calculating the odds are, the odds are still going to be incredibly small.

If what you were saying was true we could destroy the earth by having a 10 year old do the calculations since they would almost certainly be wrong.

Maybe that's why we haven't met any aliens. The alien societies all get to the point where they develop their versions of the LHC and annihilate themselves due to an underestimation of the consequences.

Are you really sure about this? I've played Katamari Damacy and a small little ball starting at less than 1 cm, bumps into random things thus growing in size. Eventually, the ball is able to roll over and absorb the earth, other planets, stars and other galaxies and (presumably black holes). What's left after I don't know - it was an computer-based physics simulation played on my television screen.